Writing by hand

Part of my writing "process" - if that's what I should call it - is to write my first drafts by hand. I have dozens of notebooks, many of them still empty, that I keep close at hand so that I can write when inspiration strikes. I have a hard time coming up with brand new material when I'm typing into my computer. If I already have a good idea of what I want to say, or I'm continuing a scene that is nearly done, I can get fresh material on the computer. But writing by hand is so much easier for me.

Maybe it's because I don't get distracted by typos. Maybe it's easier to strike through a thought and rewrite it rather than delete and try again. But I feel a lot more connected to my writing when I do it by hand.

So, I've been editing a manuscript that I've recently started querying. There was a scene that just plain didn't work. Every time I tried to edit it on the computer, I felt like I was making it worse. Then I'd try stepping away from the computer and rewriting the scene just by hand, but that made the scene go a completely different direction than I'd originally intended. I felt that the answer was somewhere between the scene as it stood in the computer and the scene I'd just free-written. So I copied the scene from my computer into my notebook and looked at it beside the reworked scene I'd written. I began rewriting the scene, combining elements from each version, but doing it all by hand. Finally, I ended up with something I was happy with.

Writing by hand definitely helps unlock my creativity in ways that typing just can't.